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Archive for January, 2013

At MIPIM’s first edition of the Innovation Forum, March 12-15th, MVRDV and The Why Factory (T?F) present their ongoing research on the design of skyscrapers and the potential of porosity as a European approach to urban density. The results are presented as scale models made of LEGO bricks, recently exhibited at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale and at Business of Design Week Hong Kong. The exhibition is combined with a lecture on urban design by Winy Maas on Wednesday, 13th of March at 10:00am.

Porous City All Images by Frans Parthesius

MIPIM is launching the MIPIM Innovation Forum, a meeting place for sharing ideas and debate for everyone involved in building tomorrow’s cities. This exclusive MIPIM program puts buildings and users at the heart of this industry conversation in order to highlight the entire range of innovative solutions to maximize the value of property portfolios. Additionally, the MIPIM Innovation Forum will feature the “Porous City – Open the tower” exhibition earlier presented at last year’s Venice Biennale.

Students of The Why Factory have built and developed the towers

“Porous City – Open the tower” uses Lego towers to explore futuristic concepts of urban design imagined by The Why Factory, a research institute for the city of the future. Nine three-metre high skyscrapers will rise up during the four days of the show, acting as visual support to debates on the new processes and the role of research in Europe’s urban future.

Main question of Porous City: whether there is a European alternative to the skyscraper typology

The exhibition of nine large towers at MIPIM in Cannes represents the outcome of the earlier design studio “Eurohigh” at Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, a collaborative project by T?F and KRADS.Porous City has been generously supported by LEGO Group, Denmark. The exhibition is combined with a lecture on urban design by Winy Maas on Wednesday, 13th of March at 10:00am.

MVRDV was set up in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) in 1993 by Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. MVRDV engages globally in providing solutions to contemporary architectural and urban issues. A research based and highly collaborative design method engages experts from all fields, clients and stakeholders in the creative process. The results are exemplary and outspoken buildings, urban plans, studies and objects, which enable our cities and landscapes to develop towards a better future.Early projects such as the headquarters for the Dutch Public Broadcaster VPRO and housing for elderly WoZoCo in Amsterdam lead to international acclaim.MVRDV develops its work in a conceptual way, the changing condition is visualised and discussed through designs, sometimes literally through the design and construction of a diagram. The office continues to pursue its fascination and methodical research on density using a method of shaping space through complex amounts of data that accompany contemporary building and design processes.

MVRDV first published a cross section of these study results in FARMAX (1998), followed by a.o. MetaCity/Datatown (1999), Costa Iberica (2000), Regionmaker (2002), 5 Minutes City (2003), KM3 (2005), and more recently Spacefighter (2007) and Skycar City (2007). MVRDV deals with global ecological issues in large scale studies such as Pig City as well as in small pragmatic solutions for devastated areas of New Orleans.

Current projects include various housing projects in the Netherlands, Spain, China, France, the United Kingdom, USA, India, Korea and other countries, a bank headquarter in Oslo, Norway, a public library for Spijkenisse , Netherlands, a central market hall for Rotterdam, a culture plaza in Nanjing, China, large scale urban plans include a plan for an eco-city in Logroño, Spain, an urban vision for Oslo or the doubling in size of Almere, Netherlands and Grand Paris, the vision of a post-Kyoto Greater Paris region.

The work of MVRDV is exhibited and published world wide and receives international awards. The 75 architects, designers and staff members conceive projects in a multi-disciplinary collaborative design process and apply highest technological and sustainable standards.

Together with Delft University of Technology MVRDV runs The Why Factory, an independent think tank and research institute providing argument for architecture and urbanism by envisioning the city of the future.

Founded in 1963, Reed MIDEM is a leading organiser of professional, international tradeshows. Reed MIDEM events have established themselves as key dates in professional diaries. The company hosts MIPTV, MIPDOC, MIPCOM, and MIPJUNIOR for the television and digital content industries, MIDEM for music professionals, MIPIM, MIPIM Asia and MAPIC for the property and retail real estate sectors.Reed MIDEM is a division of Reed Exhibitions, the world’s leading events organizer with over 500 events in 39 countries. In 2011 Reed brought together six million active event participants from around the world generating billions of dollars in business. Today Reed events are held throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Africa and organized by 33 fully staffed offices. Reed Exhibitions serves 44 industry sectors with trade and consumer events and is part of the Reed Elsevier Group plc, a world-leading publisher and information provider and a FTSE 100 company. www.reedexpo.com

Tidy gable houses alongside the new meadow – this was the concept of the development plan. On top of this, the plot was deep and the clients not necessarily conventional. The preference was for a more free-style way of living.

Schondorf on Lake Ammersee has become an attractive place to live due its location, its good infrastructure, the short distance to Munich and the airport. A mansion for a business couple, curious, brave and interested in design. A house with complex functional sequences. A framed view of the sculptural landscape. 380 massive acrylic glass cylinders perforating the building’s exterior skin.

A hideaway for family and friends. At the moment still a holiday home, later possibly a place to stay when retired. We were commissioned because we had built a lot in the Fünf-Seen-Land (Five-Lakes-District) and the area in this case, behind Salzburg, is comparable. An idyllic place between the mountains and the lake, in its surroundings and the landscape protection area. Challenging negotiations were conducted with authorities concerning landscape protection.

Apartment Bosques 05 is a single-level apartment located within a high-end district of Mexico City. Ezequiel Farca reconfigured the space and transformed its impact on the family with an entirely new palette of colors, materials, and lighting.

A central hallway welcomes visitors, while diverting attention away from private bedroom areas. Farca installed wood paneling on several walls to strategically warm the space, and to introduce the richness of natural material to the inner core of the home. An automatic lighting system allows the family to preset a variety of lighting schemes with the push of a button.

The Spanish architect Alberto Campo Baeza has been awarded the HEINRICH TESSENOW GOLD MEDAL 2012. Among the distinguished architects to have received the award are the Portuguese architect, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Peter Zumthor from Switzerland and the Norwegian Sverre Fehn, all laureates of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

The L House in Hirafu is a private holiday residence in Niseko, Hokkaido. Following the escarpment that defined the topography in prehistoric times, the site is a steep slope with un-compromised views of Mount Yotei. Despite being located not far from the House on the Slopes, the ground conditions here vary so drastically that excavating the mountain would lead to massive reinforced retaining walls and hence a prohibitive increase in cost. In response to such constraints and in order to exploit the site’s view, we proposed a house in the trees.

The new Eco-resort of Parque de Pedras Salgadas, Portugal, consists of a set of seven small houses in perfect harmony with the surrounding outstanding nature.

Designed in a modular prefabrication system but flexible to adapt to the specific places within the park, these houses result in several different combinations of the same three modules (entrance/bathing – living – sleeping) creating different morphologies and different dialogues with the surrounding nature, wisely occupying the empty spaces between the trunksof large trees and, at the same time, allowing each home to be unique, special and worth visiting.